ScienceDaily (Aug. 12, 2011) Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet -- a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system.
The new work appears in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it's truly an alien world," said astronomer and lead author David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).